Even since the previous expansion, the game takes a very long time to load from the desktop. As in 2-3 minutes. I was hoping Legends might help, but it does not. To be clear, the game runs fine when it finally does start-up, but 2-3 minutes is a very long time compared to just about every other game I own.

Is anyone else experiencing this or have any ideas of how to fix it? Or is this just normal?

MSE is the only anti-virus running in the background on my machine. Unless Steam is causing a problem, I can't think of anything else that would be causing a conflict, but I guess I can turn those off and see if it impacts anything.

Edit: Not much of an improvement. Most of the time is spent looking at the menu telling me its loading the game, then I get a black screen for 15-20 seconds before the splash screens start firing up. At that point a mouse click puts me to the menu.

So there is something that is causing the game to load pretty slowly, and I have at least a mid-range (or more) equivalent system.

ORIGINAL: Sarkus Edit: Not much of an improvement. Most of the time is spent looking at the menu telling me its loading the game, then I get a black screen for 15-20 seconds before the splash screens start firing up. At that point a mouse click puts me to the menu.

Which menu do you mean when you say "Most of the time is spent looking at the menu telling me its loading the game"?

Is it the screen shown below? Or is it the Launcher screen that comes before this one?

You could also try starting DistantWorlds.exe directly in the root game folder. Navigate to C:\Matrix Games\Distant Worlds\ on your hard drive (assuming a default install) and double-click the file DistantWorlds.exe

Just as reference I too have a startup time of 2:50 from the distantworlds.exe to the first sound of the intro movies. I run it on a Core2 Duo at 2.00 Ghz with 2GB RAM. Maybe that is below mid-range machine these days? I turn most things off before starting; only thing I can see using CPU apart from DW is explorer and it barely uses anything (at least while DW is loading).

For me this length of startup time is not a big thing - I think it more important that once started I have a fun game and that it runs (pretty much) trouble free. Faster load times are really just the icing on the cake.

p.s. There are some games that take way longer to load (notably Shogun 2). I haven't timed it but it would be in the region of 15 minutes and I make no exaggeration.

I generally have a long load time as well. I think it might be due to me having a lower end machine. Doesn't faze me though, I take the time to make a sandwich or grab a frosty adult beverage for my gaming session.

ORIGINAL: Sarkus Edit: Not much of an improvement. Most of the time is spent looking at the menu telling me its loading the game, then I get a black screen for 15-20 seconds before the splash screens start firing up. At that point a mouse click puts me to the menu.

Which menu do you mean when you say "Most of the time is spent looking at the menu telling me its loading the game"?

Is it the screen shown below? Or is it the Launcher screen that comes before this one?

You could also try starting DistantWorlds.exe directly in the root game folder. Navigate to C:\Matrix Games\Distant Worlds\ on your hard drive (assuming a default install) and double-click the file DistantWorlds.exe

Yes, that screen is where it sits for most of the time. And as a point of reference, my PC is more powerful then some others mentioned - quad 2.6 core, 4GB Ram, 1 GB Video card (not that I expect that matters here).

Running straight from the exe the time was a bit faster - about 1:45 from clicking on the exe to when the screen went black. Then 23 seconds of a black screen before the Matrix splash fired up.